Texas Two-Step Vote Could Trip Up Clinton

[question everything]

The Wall Street Journal

Texas Two-Step Vote Could Trip Up Clinton
By JUNE KRONHOLZ
February 27, 2008; Page A10

(snip)

Of the 2,025 delegates either candidate needs to win the nomination, Texas has 228. The primary, where the candidates are thought to be in a dead heat, will award 126 of those seats. Minutes after the polls close, Texas Democrats then will convene caucuses that will seat an additional 67 delegates, and here Sen. Obama's superior field operation is likely to work to his advantage. The allegiances of the 35 superdelegates, who aren't bound by the results of the primary or the caucuses, are increasingly uncertain.

Also problematic for Sen. Clinton is that party rules give fewer delegates to those parts of the state where she is most popular and more delegates to those areas where Sen. Obama is expected to win. After seven days of early voting yesterday, 10.2% of the Democratic voters in Hidalgo County, a Clinton stronghold along the Mexican border, had already cast their ballots. That is the highest turnout, by percentage, in the state so far and illustrates the enthusiasm Sen. Clinton is generating among Hispanic voters. But Hidalgo County and the surrounding Brownsville state Senate district have only three delegate votes at the convention. That is compared with eight for Austin, where Sen. Obama is favored, because party rules award convention delegates based on how many votes a state Senate district gave to the Democratic candidates in the past two statewide elections.

(snip)

In 2004, Hispanics heavily favored President Bush over Democrat John Kerry, giving Hispanic areas relatively few Democratic delegates this year. El Paso, where 81% of the county is Hispanic, is part of a state Senate district that will get just three delegates. Meanwhile, in the 2006 governor's race, Houston voters, and especially blacks, turned out in big numbers for former Rep. Chris Bell, a Houston Democrat. That translates into seven delegate votes for the Houston area and six for Dallas, which also has a big African-American population.

(snip)


URL for this article:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB120407284394395103.html (subscription)

[question everything]

1. After the popular votes vs. electoral college delegates in 2000

I am having hard time understanding while our party would still support a system where there may be discrepancy between number of delegates and the popular votes.